Review by Kubiccy on September 17, 2011.

Yet again, for the fourth time, it is that Lin, Lan and Len come back to Earth in order to fullfil the will of their Master, eternal and powerful Morkobot. Again, he re-infected his faithful subjects’ minds with wild and unbridled stream of unearthly consciousness; this time was materialized in the form of hereby reviewed "MoRbO".

The trilogy, consisting of first three albums of Italian trio, came to the end along with silent and anxious "Morto". Totally unpredictable Morkobot, whose plans elude the perception of all ordinary mortals, changed his face by wearing a mask of absolute severity and passing on plagues and his anger onto his servants. That way "MoRbO" disease hit the Earth with a new dose of heavy, strange and twisted sounds, created only with two bass guitars that are supported by drums (with an exception for 'Mor' with keybord 'guest' parts in it). This time, the music message sounds harder and more aggressive, heavier and much more raw. Morkobot's mind, free from opiates, stopped to follow mysterious cosmic tracks, scattered on the edge of never explored remote black holes. Now, tireless Morkobot is simply (and in a more human way) solidly fucked up (pissed-off?) and through his faithful trio manifests his mood in a pretty baffling manner.

What does it mean in practice? First of all, noisy, sometimes unbearable "MoRbO' attacks the listener with its massive sound of thick overdriven bass and strongly broken drum parts. All subtlety known from the past, playing with silence and disturbing atmosphere have been put in the shade so deeply that it's indeed not that easy to get used to new nature of sullen Morkobot. Here, the band reaches raw core of their music, stripping it of all sorts of ornaments. It seems that sounds served by three Italian 'L' lords are just a portion of cacophonic noise that is kept in tight rein only by divine will of almighty Morkobot. Sonic attack relents (eases off?) in one single moment - in 5th minute of the 9-minutes long aforementioned track, titled 'Mor'. This piece of work most clearly refers to the band's earlier form, and to be honest, in my opinion - this is the daintiest morsel of the whole cake.

The problem with "MoRbO" is its too excessive uniformity and pretty surprising homogeneity of all songs contained. Not only they're similar to each other, but also within the track limit not too much happens, apart from constant attack on drums and guitar strings. Thus, despite the fact you still may look to no avail for melody in trio's works, this album sounds... way more plain than previous ones, more straithforward, but also distincly much less sophisticated.

Instead of sweeping the listener away to phantasmagoric world of Morkobot's divine temper, Lin, Lan and Len decided to lash his head with bludgeon fanatically. This is a novelty, and the chosen direction does not satisfy me entirely. Why? ‘Cause here and there you may find few projects who based their music essence on rhythm section juggling. But, so far, none of them could show off such range of unique ideas and power of creation of such bizarre and mysterious aura. Giving up its undeniable trumps, Morkobot perilously came up to them. Too bad, because as a result, 'MoRbO' does not fully reflect their true potential, does not adequately show real power of this band.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship: 8.5
Atmosphere: 8.5
Production: 8.5
Originality: 8.5
Overall: 8.5

Rating: 8.5 out of 10